on some level create the environment in which people can explore literature especially. there aren't enough programs like this around the country. i wish there were more. the literary community in albany is quite ridge. we are any feedback loop with it. i don't think such an operation as the writers institute could have been created in the first place without there being not only a strong group of writers, in columbia county where a lot of new york city writers have weekend homes all the way up to saratoga and beyond, the writers colony -- the writers' groups in hudson, n.y. east and west into western massachusetts, west to syracuse. that is the audience, sort of circumference we work with so when you go back and you find a general population quite proud of albany's connection to henry james and herman melville or bret harte or a little bit further east, emily dickinson or further south, say hi to our old friend walt whitman or edith wharton, when we have this sense of cultural heritage, it helps to amplify the writer's own sense of being part of a larger story, quite im